OLPC Gets 1,000 Laptops Closer To Mass Production

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You can barely see it in the picture, against the green table top, but that’s the first of 1,000 Quanta XO 2B1 laptops to roll off the assembly line in Shanghai as part of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.

The first 1,000 machines are set for rigorous environmental testing to simulate the harsh conditions they’ll eventually be used in. Tests will include dropping the XOs from various heights, children pounding on the keyboards, and making sure the encasements are dirt-and-dust resistant. Debug kits are also going out to developers to test out the apps that make up the notebooks’ OS.

After this round of testing, the next units produced will go to school children in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand to get knocked around in real-life conditions as the final phase of testing before mass production begins in the summer of 2007.